Wherever there is a Jew there is a journey; for a Jew to go travelling in search of his Jewishness is therefore doubly Jewish.

When fast-breaking political events forced British novelist Jacobson (Peeping Tom) to put off a trip to Lithuania planned as a search for his Jewish roots, he accepted an offer from the BBC to visit Jewish communities around the globe instead. This informed and witty account of his experiences deals with the wide variety of contemporary Jewish life, as well as with how Jacobson's observations affected his own concept of what it means to be a Jew. Riding an emotional roller coaster, he witnessed the hostility between Jews and African Americans in New York City, attended services in a gay synagogue in California and found his basic cynicism about religion reinforced after he spent time with Orthodox Jews in Israel, although his spirits were lifted by a visit to an idealistic, tolerant Israeli kibbutz. His journey concluded with the postponed trip to Lithuania, where the author found virulent anti-Semitism. The book has been adapted for a forthcoming BBC/PBS documentary.
From the Back Cover&colon;

Whether one understands it as flight or restlessness, as ancient punishment or promise, the compulsion to travel is at the heart of historical Jewishness. Wherever there is a Jew, there is a journey, and for a Jew to go in search of his roots is doubly Jewish. As Howard Jacobson sets off in search of his Eastern European roots, he does so not with the sentimental hope of repossessing the sensation of belonging, but fully expecting to repossess nothing. As the journey takes him via the Catskills, Manhattan, Tucson, L.A., Eilat, Jerusalem, Tiberias and Haifa, to say nothing of Stamford Hill and Llandudno - although there are shorter routes to Lithuania - he finds there is more to being Jewish than schmaltz and self-ridicule. Roots Schmoots is as fast, funny and furious as Howard Jacobson's fans would expect, but beneath its surface there is a profound and moving exploration of what it is to be a Jew in the late twentieth century.

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